I
want to tell you a story. It starts with – 'Once upon a time' and
it goes like this:
Love
descends:
Once
upon a time, a child was born in a rustic village of India and
was embraced by love of his mother. Two months later, I returned home
from my boarding school and I heard his voice for the first time.
“Mom,
is that a cat?”
“It
is your brother”, she said.
New
born babies, I guess sound all the same, no matter their species.
And, of course, I was hoping for a cat.
The
Un-magical spell:
Many
years passed and I came to USA for graduate school.
When
I went to visit home for the first time, there was so much excitement
in home and everyone wanted to know what I did here in USA. So, I
started telling the room full of my family and extended family
members about my research. About 20 seconds into my elegant narration
of the super grand work that I had been doing, I had very
successfully put everyone to dead sleep!
Meanwhile
my little brother, who as it turned out was not a cat, was playing
outside, completely oblivious to my newly acquired un-magical charm
of sleep. When he came back home, he asked me the same dreaded
question that my relatives dared asked earlier in the day, “Didi
(elder sister), what is that you study in your America school?”
You
see, I will happily play the Pied Piper and lead the entire world to
sleep or doom or whatever that comatose-sleep was. But I can't do
that to my brother!
So,
I told him a story instead:
"A
story of vast vast ocean, oh so blue! An ocean, as big as thousands
of lakes put together! You see earth can appear quite small in
Geography books and fast flying airplanes. But listen, earth is huge
– our big town, our entire big town is not even a speck on this
soccer ball of earth.
Some
people spilled some oil in middle of ocean and the fishes were not
able to breathe and they died. When this oil reached land, the land
birds, who were playing with the water got oil all over them and
their feathers got stuck. They could not fly and died. In my school,
I am studying how to best clean this oil when it reaches the shore.
You see, sometime oil makes puddles like water puddles after rain and
sometimes it make small balls with sand like our mumma makes
sweetmeat balls with butter. I want to know which one should I clean
first- the puddle or the balls."
No
one died that day. And, life moved on.
Memories
that inspire:
About
two years later, working on my PhD, we had our mentors, professors
and big people reminding us over and over again that we need to learn
how to communicate our research.
Aah!
How the joy of giving the gift of sleep to my family clashed with the
shame and sadness of my boring narratives!
One
usual night, I was talking to my brother on phone about his school
and he told me about this new subject that they have to study-
Environmental Science. I chimed in, “Brother, I study that subject
too! Wow!” And, I so remember what he said-
“
I know. I remember you told me that you study how to clean big
oceans from oil. The birds and fishes die when oil is spilled and you
want to clean the oil puddles and oil balls.”
He
remembered. And, in his remembering he imparted the secrets of
scientific communication to me.
May be this passed your noticing, but
our world has been much lighter and brighter place since then.
As
I write my first blog for VT SuN to talk about my research, I write
it for my Guru of scientific communication, my darling baby brother!
